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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

As a clueless european why is that a problem if we are talking about a private university? Wouldn't that be more of a problem if it was a public university funded by public (tax) money?

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There's really no such thing as a true private university in the US, at least not with respect to any of the schools in the of the rankings. All top schools receive a ton of government money in the form of research grants and other investments and partnerships. Then you add in all the federal money that comes in via the students from federally subsidized student loans, grants, etc and what you have is effectively a school where the funding is public and the management and accountability is private. Much like with banks in the US, the upside is privatized and the downside is socialized.

Note - this is not a defense or critique of their policy with regard to race and admissions. I don't believe that it's just or reasonable to use race to lower or raise the bar for anyone. In an ideal world, admissions would be merit based and you'd let the chips fall where they may. The fact is that certain groups place higher or lower levels of value on a specific type of educational achievement. There's nothing wrong with that. In some subcultures in the US, the best thing a young person can do in the eyes of their parents and community is join the military. There are other cultures where that is seen as a bad path. We shouldn't be in the business of telling others what is or is not in their best interests. That should be left to individual families and communities.

There is a large group of obsessed upper-middle class parents that believe you must go to Harvard (or another Ivy League school) to succeed in life.

Sadly, the jobs that are most dominated by nepotism and politics (law, government, academic professors of softer subjects) it really does help to go to Harvard or similar and have the brand name. Value-producing industries in the private sector are not exclusively merit-based, but it's much more likely you can go from the bottom to the top by starting a competitive business. And starting a business does not require going to Harvard.

But raising $100m from VCs is a lot easier if you did go to Harvard.

I totally agree, but it is still possible. If you build a $100m revenue per year business starting from nothing, no one can take it away from you in America (currently at least, who knows about the future). Many people have successfully done this.

However, I have yet to see anyone become a Supreme Court Justice who went to community college. I believe almost all of them went to Harvard or Yale...

> a Supreme Court Justice who went to community college

To be fair, you cannot become an attorney just going to community college. You need a graduate degree. Graduate school admissions do not have the legacy admissions preference that undergrad does. While true that all current SC judges went to Harvard or Yale, they did not necessarily go for undergrad. For example, Clarence Thomas went to Conception Abbey Seminary for undergrad, which is a little-known school in Kansas.

IMO I should not have to go to any college to become an attorney. California does not require attending law school to take the bar exam and become a licensed attorney. The law is written on paper, case law is produced by the courts, and the techniques for comprehending and using law are not rocket science and can be self-taught using books.

Expecting that only top-tier colleges can train good lawyers is elitist nonsense, just more gate keeping by the upper class.

I actually agree with you! Most cases should be able to be settled in court just by the two parties at odds. If the law is too complicated so as not to allow that, the law is what needs to change, not the individuals seeking redress.

oddly, those states have already been compiled and in modern times you appear to be correct(i didnt go to too much effort to break them down by years served)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_schools_attended_b...

> you must go to Harvard (or another Ivy League school) to succeed in life.

For certain career paths it helps a lot.

It also depends on where you live. In the Northeast there is a very tangible class system based on where you went to school. This still exists on the West Coast but it's much less intense unless you are going for big-time VC money or working in law or finance.

Many private universities in the US, including Harvard, have a reputation that is built not only (or even primarily) on the quality of their undergraduate education but on the quality of their research output. The funding for this research, which includes compensation for professors, grad students, and operational overhead, forms a significant component of the revenue of the institution overall. It frequently dwarfs undergraduate tuition revenue and often constitutes the largest single component of institutional revenue.

A substantial portion of this funding is federal. It's in the public interest for the positive effects of being educated at a well-funded research institution to be allocated "fairly" and since that funding comes from public sources it is well within the purview of the government to regulate that allocation.

In the US it is illegal in many cases for private business to discriminate based on race, despite them being private businesses. This case is about whether that extends to universities.

With regards to public policy: there's not much of a problem (except to the extend that public policy props up private schools).

But should it not cause us to re-evaluate how much we respect the university and it's degrees?

Harvard receives federal funding through student tuition assistance and research funding.

Because in many respects it's the #1 University in the world where there is intense global competition amongst students to get it and they believe Harvard admission would be determined in a merit based fair manner.

Harvard is essentially funded by public money since it has a special tax status. Tax exempt groups have stricter guidelines for behavior relative to purely private, for-profit groups.

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